Trunk Tools CEO Dr. Sarah Buchner Featured on Bricks, Buck$ & Bytes Podcast

Episode Title: Why Most Construction AI Tools Will Fail

Podcast Info: Bricks, Buck$ & Bytes (Bricks and Bytes), Hosted by Owen Drury, Dustin DeVan, & Martin Pierkarz

Trunk Tools CEO Dr. Sarah Buchner Featured on Bricks, Buck$ & Bytes Podcast

“Real AI is way more about how you do change management than picking the right technology.” That line from Dr. Sarah Buchner, Founder and CEO of Trunk Tools, anchors her return to the Bricks, Buck$ & Bytes roundtable in an episode titled “Why Most Construction AI Tools Will Fail.” A year on from Trunk Tools’ Series B, she joined hosts Owen Drury, Dustin DeVan, and Martin Piekarz to make a direct case: the hardest part of construction AI is not the model — it is getting people to trust it, and building AI genuinely worth trusting.

Sarah walks through what has changed since the raise: a team now past 100 people weighted toward engineering and AI, and a shift from a chat-based co-pilot to what she calls a “system of action” — a platform that completes work end to end. At its base is Cortex, the construction intelligence layer that turns raw project data, including drawings, into a construction-specific knowledge graph so task-specific agents can hand work off to one another. A drawing review agent that finds a discrepancy can pass it to an RFI agent that drafts the RFI — all layered neutrally on top of Procore, Autodesk, and SharePoint rather than replacing them.

She is candid about the market, too. A new AI takeoff startup seems to launch weekly, but most break on the last 20% — the long tail of corner cases that only deep domain knowledge, real data, and patience can solve. It is easy to reach 80%; the final stretch is what is hard and expensive. That is the context for the episode’s most quotable line on vibe-coded point solutions: “Don’t come on the market with something that Claude can already do.” This is purpose-built construction AI, not a generic chatbot pointed at a jobsite — and, Sarah argues, that is exactly why Trunk Tools will not sell its agents unless it can train your team first. Technology without adoption is shelfware.

In this episode, you’ll hear Sarah dive into:

• Why Trunk Tools won’t sell its agents unless it can train your team first
• The shift from point solution to a “system of action” built on Cortex and layered over Procore and Autodesk
• Why construction drawings are the hardest problem in the field
• How agent-to-agent orchestration turns a drawing discrepancy into a drafted RFI
• Why most AI takeoff tools break on the last 20%
• Her blunt read on vibe-coded tools: “Don’t come on the market with something that Claude can already do”
• Why the market has moved from endless pilots to full enterprise rollouts

The episode also features a structural engineer breaking down the Midtown Manhattan column-buckling story and SubBase’s Eric Helitzer on his $7M Series A.

Watch the full episode on YouTube or listen on Spotify to hear Sarah’s full take on trust, drawings, and why most construction AI tools will fail.